


all i ever wanted was a life in your shape

by seven_five (eleven_twelve)



Category: TREASURE (Korea Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drinking, M/M, Underage Drinking, also this is less goofy junkyu, basically junkyu and how he feels about yedam through the years, but only for story purpose this isnt about them, lapslock, mentions of ex trainees, more where do we come from why do we have tailbones but no tails junkyu, not chronological, predebut to now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 18:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleven_twelve/pseuds/seven_five
Summary: yedam is always so close. sometimes junkyu thinks that, given the opportunity, yedam would crawl right inside of him. open him up and build himself a home in junkyu's longer limbs and junkyu's broader shoulders. he would fit like there is room enough, and junkyu would let him, because he always feels like there is something missing inside of him anyways.(or: somewhere along the way, junkyu learns what that feeling means)
Relationships: Bang Yedam/Kim Junkyu
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	all i ever wanted was a life in your shape

**Author's Note:**

> this isnt chronological not is it cohesive but i hope you enjoy anyway

there are a lot of things junkyu doesn’t know the answer to. 

when he’s six years old, the family cat dies; an old scruffy calico that keeps running into the walls, one eye green and the other orange, and he asks his dad if he’ll ever see her again, if cats go to heaven like humans do, if humans go to heaven at all. he doesn’t get an answer.   
they bury her in the backyard, mark her grave with a cross made out of two branches of the old apple tree they just cut down, plant a new hydrangea, move to the city and forget. 

for years and years junkyu finds himself wondering if she knows they left her there alone, if she watches him and his brother play with ruby and cherry in envy or longing, if the guilt that consumes him is an answer to his questions or just a way of comforting himself for all the things he’ll never know. 

years later he gets a history book for his birthday, because his mother is worried about him not finding an interest in any academics, because he has no friends in the city yet, because she loves him so much that she feels bad for not being able to answer his questions.   
so he reads, about violence and suffering and building and re-building. and everything remains unanswered. he thinks about the people that lived thousands of years ago and buried their cats just like he did. he thinks about how they slaughtered their neighbours for more land to own. and he doesn’t understand. 

they eat gangjeong chicken from the place down the block at their shiny new dinner table in their shiny new apartment, and junkyu watches his father wipe away a smear of red from his mother’s upper lip, a gesture of love so gentle that he can’t imagine the soldiers that burnt entire towns to the ground loving their wives like that. 

“why do people love some people but not others?” he asks, a hollow echo in their empty living room. the moving van is somewhere halfway between chungju and seoul. his mouth full of chicken and unfinished questions. 

“well,” his father replies. “we love people and so we take care of them, but we can’t take care of everyone, that’s why we try not to love everyone.” 

“why can’t we take care of everyone?” 

a sigh. 

“the world is so big, junkyu.” 

he thinks about the nomads on prehistoric plains that became sedentary because their elders were too tired to keep going, because their children were starving. how they changed their entire worlds because they loved each other, because they cared about each other. he wonders when they stopped being made of love and turned into flesh and bone instead. 

“but-” 

“sometimes there are no _but’_ s or _why’_ s. some things just are the way they are, alright? now finish your chicken before it gets cold.” 

he gets into yg when he’s fourteen and questions why it was him, wonders what he will become, where he will go. he meets the others in the practice room, stands safely by the door as they move around their own little world like they’ve never existed anywhere else, watches his own speckled face in the countless mirrors and waits. 

noa and raesung compliment the shirt his mother got him just to make a good first impression, talk to him like they want to know him, like they do know him. yedam quietly stands behind them, and although slightly awkward in his growing limbs, his presence is all-encompassing.   
junkyu has seen him on tv, when his hair was still down to his shoulders, and his voice was a couple octaves higher than the cracked introduction he gives now the others have stopped joking around with their newest asset. he’s somewhere halfway a child and something new entirely, reminds junkyu of his old history book, the legends of children growing into prophecies. something about him feels like somewhere junkyu has never been before.   
junkyu bows slightly and lowers his gaze to the bright white tips of his new sneakers, doodles and song lyrics, a little smiling cat. yedam doesn’t say anything else. 

“don’t worry, our yedamie is a little awkward,” noa laughs, wrapping an arm around yedam’s narrow shoulders. “it’s because he’s going through puberty.” 

yedam pushes noa off and glares at him before making his way out of the room. junkyu looks at him through the mirror as he leaves. noa turns to him. 

“he’s also a little sensitive.” 

junkyu laughs with them like he’s known them all along. 

yedam comes back a good two minutes later, three choco pies in his small hands, gives one to raesung and one to junkyu, passes by noa with a playful grin before tearing the wrapper off the third choco pie and biting into it with a satisfied smirk. he sits down next to junkyu, a bony knee against his own. 

“oh, and by the way,” yedam mumbles with a mouth full of chocolate. he turns to junkyu with a smile, half polite, half something junkyu doesn’t recognise yet. puts down the first wobbly stone of the foundations of whatever they will build. “if you ever have any questions, i’ll answer them for you. just ask, alright?” 

\- 

junkyu is the only one still eating dinner, the last bits of an unsatisfactory meal scattered across his tray. he's purposely dragging out the length of every bite, chewing agonisingly slowly to not have to get up. his entire body is aching. aching to lie down, to sleep, to be held by something for so long that his limbs can feel like his own again. "i'll get indigestion," he says, and so they leave him be. for now. 

he looks up when he hears the door of the bathrooms swing open. yedam walks out and smiles when he sees junkyu still sitting there, shimmies towards him in a goofier version of the choreo they've been practising for days now. 

"do you know the joke of the thousand droplets?" he asks and flaps his still wet hands in brusque motions above junkyu's head so water droplets splatter against his forehead without waiting for an answer. "well, now you do!" 

junkyu huffs out a laugh and wipes his face, playfully jabs yedam between the ribs when he pulls out a chair and sits down next to him, as close to junkyu as the bent metal legs of the chairs will allow him. 

"did jeongwoo tell you that one?" 

yedam grins and shakes his head. "sahi." 

junkyu nods and keeps eating his chicken breast. and despite them sitting next to one another, yedam leans in slightly, his upper body angled towards junkyu like a plant growing into the sunlight. 

he's always so close. sometimes junkyu thinks that, given the opportunity, yedam would crawl right inside of him. open him up and build himself a home in junkyu's longer limbs and junkyu's broader shoulders. and he would fit like there is room enough, and junkyu would let him, because he always feels like there is something missing inside of him anyways. 

\- 

something sneaks its way into junkyu in the middle of the summer. it’s one of those days where he can't drag himself out of bed, his head hurting from the soju he and jihoon drank after their meal, a carefree ending to a carefree day, fingers still trembling with the aftershocks to his system. 

it starts raining in the early afternoon. the voices come before the front door closes, haruto, jeongwoo and hyunsuk loudly singing that one song that has been wildly overplayed on every radio station in the country, in every restaurant and every supermarket. even at home, apparently, junkyu can't escape it. they are followed by junghwan giggling quietly at something someone else has said, his voice drifting through the walls like a low rumble, the shivering of the earth, the thunder reverberating between the tall apartment blocks. 

this is the time before yedam lives at the dorms, when he and doyoung sometimes stay over in whichever beds are free for the night after practice runs late. and although they had officially been assigned roommates first, long before all the plans changed, yedam seems to prefer jihoon's company and often spends the evenings fooling around on the guitar with yoshi and asahi in the other dorm. 

doyoung spends those nights in the bunk above junkyu’s, but other than that he is often alone in the room after haruto left. junkyu isn't upset about it, he likes being alone. that's why it always bothers him so much when he can feel something he can only name as disappointment seeping down his spine whenever yedam spends the night at the other dorm. 

but on this day, however, yedam is here, in his own dorm, and junkyu attributes the heavy pounding of his heart in his temples to the remnants of alcohol coursing through his veins. 

yedam opens the door to junkyu's room without knocking and peeks his head inside. junkyu raises his hand in acknowledgement but doesn’t say anything. as yedam walks in he subconsciously shifts on the bed, pressing his back against the cold wall to make room for yedam. it happens almost as if on instinct, the intrinsic human longing to be held. 

yedam stands over him for a second and shakes his hair, wet from the rain, and the water droplets splatter against junkyu's forehead. it is a hot summer, damp and sticky, and junkyu doesn’t mind. but still he says: "you're so annoying." and yedam laughs. 

"so how was it?" he asks, when yedam gets onto the bed beside him, his left arm folded underneath his head to try and keep the pillow dry, his right hand fiddling with the hem of junkyu's shirt. 

yedam grins and ignores the question in favor of teasing him. 

"is that my shirt?" he asks, but the tone of his voice tells junkyu that yedam knows well enough. 

yes. junkyu wants to say. i missed you. junkyu wants to say. instead, he shrugs. 

"i don't know. i got drunk with yoshi and jihoon yesterday. i just picked the first shirt i found lying around." 

it’s technically not a lie. however, his brain had registered, even in his intoxicated state, the slight smell of lingering sweat and a faded cologne, the scents that were so unmistakably yedam. 

junkyu hadn't even planned on putting on a shirt at all, the july heat sticky on his skin, but in a moment of weakness he wondered if putting on the shirt would feel like being held by yedam, if it would ease the loneliness that sat inside of him like a log every time he let it in. he was overcome with an intense need to fill the empty space inside of him, to lift it out and replace it with something, anything. 

he fell asleep pretending it was yedam's bed he was in, the bed in his room at home, in his house, where every room smelled like him, where he couldn't get enough of him. pretending that yedam was just mere centimeters away, that he could have reached out and touched him if he'd needed to. 

but of course, he woke up in his own bed, and felt embarrassed for doing what he did. and despite it all he still couldn't bring himself to take off the shirt, which now smells more like himself than anything else. 

"ah, so you had fun without us?" yedam frowns but junkyu can tell he’s joking. 

"yeah, definitely more fun than sleeping on the floor and meditating all day." 

yedam smiles and shifts a little, moving his arm so that their elbows are touching ever so slightly. now that his face has emerged from the shadow of the half-closed blinds, junkyu can tell the bridge of his nose is slightly burnt from the sun. 

"it was really fun actually," he sighs. "i feel like i really got to let go for a bit, pretend like it was just me and the universe and that everything else just stopped existing for a while, you know?" 

junkyu nods. "so, what else did you guys do?" 

"we went on a hike through the forest to get to the temple. it felt really good to be out there. refreshing. the young beech leaves were so bright green, you don't see that down here. and at nightfall the cicadas were so loud that you could barely hear yourself breathe. at least i didn't have to listen to hyunsuk snoring the whole night." 

yedam laughs and junkyu grins when he imagines himself there next to him. the cool mountain wind, the sounds of the forest. 

"sounds exhausting," he replies, although part of him is jealous at the idea of getting to exist by himself for a little while. 

"of course you would say that," yedam snorts, and knocks their elbows together before continuing. 

"this morning when we left, it was raining, and the forest smelled like resin." 

junkyu is reminded of the music classes he took as a child, endless hours after school. resin for the orchestra's violin bow strings. aching fingers and competition. he smiles, and yedam looks at him like he knows. maybe that is something he mentioned once, over all the years they’ve known each other. and the mere idea of yedam remembering that junkyu likes the smell of resin, makes something tremble deep within him. 

"you know, when we were walking through a dense part of the forest near the peak, the monk told us that sometimes the trees grow so close to one another that their roots become entangled and they become part of the same tree. so, there are these trees that just grow inside of other trees, and you don't even notice it unless you look really closely and you see that the leaves are just slightly different, like they kept a little part of themselves even when becoming one. it's almost like they were always supposed to end up like that." 

junkyu looks at him as he talks, the way he purses his lips when he doesn’t know what to say. his eyes are on junkyu but his gaze is somewhere far beyond him, looking out over the city stretched across the valley, the river meandering through it like a giant silver snake in the sunlight, the crows still cawing in his ears, two of them, for good luck. when he stops talking, junkyu listens to the rain echoing through the veranda and thinks about how familiar the world feels sometimes. 

"maybe that's what happened to us," he says then, without thinking it over, and regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth. he shrinks back but the wall holds him in place.   
yedam looks him over, a confused frown, searching for something junkyu isn't so sure he will find. then he smiles, snaking a steady hand along junkyu's hip to gently rub the small of his back, and entangles their legs like tree roots, as if he will find an answer there, as if in doing so he agrees to become one. 

"yes," he says then, and laughs like the mountain wind shaking the trees. "i guess maybe it did." 

\- 

there's eight of them sitting by the river. padded coats, red tinged ears. it's so cold that junkyu can't feel the fingers of his left hand. he buries them in his pockets before yedam can hold them. 

"why are we even out here?" mashiho asks, his breath a white cloud in the winter night. 

he's frowning at jihoon, who sits huddled between hyunsuk and jaehyuk, a wide grin on his face despite the cold biting at his cheeks. they just got back from filming a treasure map, it's god knows how late. 

junkyu looks out across the river where a fog hangs low above the water. he can barely distinguish the lights of the buildings on the other bank, can't see past the third lamp post down the path. the world around them is shrouded in a bluish glow. winters are rarely this humid. it almost feels like they exist in their own light-polluted little universe. 

"i thought we could have some bonding time." a nonchalant shrug, innocent tone. junkyu doesn't even have to look at him to know he has something up his bright red sleeve. 

next to him hyunsuk snorts, "we have bonding time every day. when was the last time we weren't all together?" 

"i mean," jihoon replies, opening the bag that sits between his crossed legs, revealing the all too familiar green glass bottles. "without the babies." 

"and we can't do that upstairs?" 

"i'm trying to honour the summer," jihoon laughs, and puts a bottle of plum soju to his cracked lips without hesitation. 

junkyu sits and waits tentatively for any sign of protest, any we-have-work-tomorrow's or it's-too-cold's or i-thought-you-didn’t-like-drinking's. nothing comes. it's only when yedam reaches for a can of some foreign export strong beer that jaehyuk looks up from his own drink and says, half-joking, half-worried, "damie's still a minor." 

junkyu watches as jihoon and hyunsuk turn to one another with knowing grins. yedam freezes momentarily and junkyu has to hold back a laugh, ducks his face into his collar and waits for someone to say it. then everything sets in motion again. the unmistakable sound of a can opening. 

"nothing our heavy-weight can’t handle," junkyu says eventually, reaching out to slap yedam's back but deciding against it at the last second. his hand hangs homeless in the air for a moment too long but yedam stays silent. 

he remembers the summer they all got drunk playing truth or dare, after jihoon, it's always jihoon, had seen it in some low-budget american high school movie he was obsessed with for a good month. 

despite protest from hyunsuk, they came to the agreement that yedam could join the game, only because doyoung was away for the weekend on a trip to the sea with his family and they felt bad leaving him out. the agreement itself being, of course, a rigged game of rock paper scissors. 

and so, two hours and an ungodly amount of alcohol for their inexperienced bodies later, they were thrilled to find out that their youngest was the only one that hadn’t gotten embarrassingly drunk three drinks into the game. 

_"the heavy-weight"_ they called him for weeks after, and giggled every time the other trainees stared in confusion. then their dance teacher started saying it too and it became a running gag among the staff. if only they had known. their own little secret. junkyu can’t help but laugh at how many more of those he has. 

"it speaks," jihoon gasps in mock surprise and raises the bottle to salute him before passing it over. 

they all wear splitting grins. junkyu laughs and takes a couple of swigs, is almost embarrassed at how quickly the giddy warmth finds its way into his tired limbs. it doesn't take long for the world to start to blur slightly around the edges, the lights along the path fading into big white suns in the fog. 

around him the mood is bright, a little too loud for the time of night. jihoon and jaehyuk are translating the lyrics of going crazy into english and disagree on every other word. hyunsuk, mashiho and yoshi are watching them, laughing when jaehyuk pushes jihoon, who no longer has the strength to keep his body from tumbling backwards onto the pathway, back with a whiny, dragged out "you don’t know anything." 

on the other side of him, asahi and yedam are talking quietly. junkyu finds himself listening in, smiling every time asahi laughs at something yedam says. his unfocused gaze wanders down to where yedam rests a steady hand on asahi's thigh, but he finds no jealousy, no need to insert himself into the conversation and steal the attention, to become like the pathway lanterns in summer, surrounded by hundreds of humming bugs begging to be in the light. it's winter. there are no bugs. Instead, he sits very quietly and longs for a warmth that doesn't come from green glass bottles. 

he looks up again when jihoon lets out a particularly loud laugh that has the other shushing him, yoshi putting a hand across his mouth for good measure. for now, he feels content just to watch all of them, to revel in this moment of unabashed joy, knowing that those will be harder and harder to come by in the direction their lives are hurtling in.   
he takes another quiet swig, knows that in the morning jihoon will make fun of him for not partaking in their game of flip the bottle, but he's scared that if he drinks any more, he'll tell them things he can't take back. 

before jaehyuk can persuade him into joining anyway, he leans back onto the wet grass and stares up at the sky, hopes so desperately that yedam will come and lie down next to him and tell him what those two bright stars are that hang like faint little nightlights above their heads. 

his mind wanders to the observatory he visited on a field trip in middle school, the star above the shed jesus was born in, the time he was a cub scout for a summer and the leader taught them to find the pole star if they were ever lost because it would show them the north.   
"the stars will bring you home," he'd said, and junkyu laughs at it now, because he's been so lost for so long, and he's never known how to find the pole star at all. 

then there's the rustle of a coat, a familiar shoulder against his own, the one voice he would recognize anywhere. 

"what are you looking at?" yedam asks and junkyu’s heart stutters at the way his words come out slightly jumbled, the glassy look in his half-lidded eyes when junkyu turns to look at him.   
he wraps his own arm around yedam's, pulls him closer than he would allow himself to in the daytime, and points a finger up at the sky. “is any of them the pole star?" 

yedam laughs, his voice raspy and tired in his throat. 

"that's jupiter and saturn," he replies with a smile and brings a hand up to gently poke junkyu's forehead. "dummy." 

junkyu looks at him for a long time, his cheeks red from the cold and the alcohol, his dimpled grin. he thinks about all the people that have watched the universe change in front of their very eyes with the ones they love most right beside them, years and years right back to the beginning of time. 

"not stars?" 

yedam turns to look back at him, his smile widening, pointy teeth, eyes bright, "not stars." 

the sudden burning desire to kiss yedam floods him, shocking and startling and so painfully familiar. he wishes he could attribute it to the now empty bottle that lays forgotten in the grass between them, but even in his intoxicated state, junkyu knows better. 

"you're the pole star," he says then. and despite the way yedam's face scrunches up in confusion, he can't bring himself to look away. 

"what?" yedam laughs, and his breath is so warm against junkyu's frozen cheeks. junkyu blinks once, twice, tries to focus, tightens his grip on yedam's arm before letting go. 

there are a lot of things junkyu doesn't know the answers to. sometimes he just invents them. 

"you're the pole star," he says again, a little louder this time. everything stills for a moment. then he sits up and flings a bottle cap at jihoon's head to elicit a laugh or a whine from him, and breaks the moment he invented before he lets it become a truth. 

\- 

the sky is the colour of wet limestone, the sea bright teal as far as the eye can see. the three of them are sitting on the beach with their feet in the sand, yedam, then junkyu, then jihoon. around them, the air smells like salt and something static. they’re all so far from home. 

jihoon is boasting about his swimming skills, making a bet with junkyu that he can make it to the second orange buoy without the coast guard having to come and save him from drowning. 

“is ten thousand won really worth the risk of dying?” junkyu argues. he knows jihoon is joking, but a part of him wouldn’t put it past the guy to end up in the hospital trying to put his money where his mouth is. he’s had worse ideas. 

“oh, definitely,” jihoon replies. “besides, it’s my birthday. the universe should be on my side today.” 

yedam laughs from the other side of junkyu, a small sandcastle in between his legs. 

“i wouldn’t count on it.” 

“are you saying i can’t swim?” jihoon asks incredulously, lifting a hand to his open mouth for dramatic effect. 

“i’m saying the sea is a lot stronger than it looks on the surface,” yedam retorts. 

“yeah, i saw you almost drowning earlier,” junkyu butts in. “why were you far from the shore anyway?” 

yedam turns to him, narrows his eyes ever so slightly, like he’s contemplating something. he sighs, smiles. 

“i like being in the water. it makes me feel held,” yedam says then, a little embarrassed. he’s telling the truth. and junkyu feels like something shifts inside of him. 

“don’t be so fake deep,” jihoon replies with a laugh, throwing a fistful of sand in yedam’s general direction. 

“no, i’m serious,” he replies, tone mockingly scandalised. “i need a hug or i might go crazy.” 

“he’s going crazy,” jihoon sings loudly, and very much off-key, moving from where he leaves a person-shaped imprint in the damp sand to dance whatever he can be bothered to remember of the choreo. 

yedam looks up at him and giggles, singing along quietly to their song. his hair is still wet, face red from the sun and exhilaration. there’s sand on his left cheek. junkyu reaches out and wipes it away before he can think about it. a memory loosens somewhere in the very back of his brain. 

yedam looks at him with a smile, eyes bright despite the darkness looming above. there’s a storm coming, junkyu is sure of it. 

“there was some sand,” he states, pointing at yedam’s face, offering an explanation where yedam didn’t ask. 

“i was saving it for later,” yedam replies and junkyu turns away with a laugh. 

he doesn’t know why there is always this need to explain why he does what he does around yedam. when jihoon or jeongwoo tell him a joke, he laughs unabashedly; hyunsuk’s compliments are met with proud smiles; he doesn’t even move away when haruto crawls into his bed in the mornings sometimes, because he misses home, or because he just likes how he feels harboured in junkyu’s long, long arms.   
and then yedam looks at him and he turns away like holding his gaze means doing something wrong, and then yedam touches him and his body becomes uncontrollable, as if it’s being taken over by something he refuses to name. 

across from them, jihoon ends his performance and takes a theatrical bow. he drops down into the sand between yedam’s legs, squashing his sandcastle in the process, wraps his muscular arms around yedam’s small frame and hugs him so tightly. 

“i’ll hold you then, if no one else will.” 

when yedam laughs, he sounds like the sea. 

junkyu tears his gaze away from them, looks at the sky instead. he licks his lips and tastes the sea. it’s not that he wouldn’t do it, it’s that he doesn’t know how he would explain. thick clouds are gathering right above them. there’s a storm coming. 

jihoon holds onto yedam until the first raindrops dig little craters into the sand. when he lets go with a high-pitched squeal there’s nothing to explain. 

the wind picks up. junkyu sits very still and listens to the waves as they crash violently onto the shore. 

“junkyu, let’s go!” 

jihoon rushes ahead. yedam turns back where the sand turns into perfectly kempt grass, reaches out a hand and waits for junkyu to take it. then they run. and junkyu thinks that sometimes, offering answers where the truth is evident right underneath the gentle surface, distracts him from the fact that asking questions would mean allowing himself to drown. 

\- 

junkyu hangs off the couch with his head in jaehyuk’s lap. they’re watching reruns of a gameshow jaehyuk swears he’s never seen before, despite knowing all the right answers. 

“see?” he pipes up, voice swelling with pride when he finally misses a question. ironic. gloating at proving junkyu wrong. 

“you’re turning into jihoon,” junkyu says and rolls his eyes at him. 

“yeah, except i’m much nicer,” jaehyuk replies with a smile, raking a gentle hand through junkyu’s still wet hair. he leans in to the touch, pretends jaehyuk is someone he’s not, and everything is quiet inside of him for a second. jaehyuk takes his hand away again. “and smarter.” 

junkyu stifles a yawn and looks up at him. the ceiling lights are bright yellow around his head like an angel’s halo, his smile lopsided. 

“well then, if you are so smart why don’t you tell me something that is gonna keep me awake?” 

jaehyuk starts talking about something he learned in psychology class and junkyu lets his head loll to the side, jaehyuk’s thighs warm against his cheek, and lets his voice float around his tired head. 

he stares at the empty box of choco pies on the floor. when he swallows, he can still taste the chocolate in the back of his throat, like so many years ago. so much for the new no-snacks-past-ten rule they only recently agreed on.   
and despite subduing the growling of his stomach, the cookies didn’t make him feel any fuller. it’s as if whatever is sitting so deep within him, gnawing away at his insides like a starving beast, can’t be satiated with sugary carbs, no matter how much junkyu tries to feed it.   
and if jaehyuk worries about him shoving cookie after cookie in his mouth in a desperate attempt at keeping it contained, he doesn’t show it. or maybe junkyu just refuses to acknowledge. he thinks about the nomads building entire villages to feed their children, the foundations of their houses buried under layers of sand and ash, and wonders if something needs to change. 

he looks up at jaehyuk again and smiles, brings a finger up to his chin and pushes gently. 

“i wasn’t listening, professor.” 

jaehyuk whines, stomping his legs, making junkyu’s head bounce around on his thighs. junkyu laughs. 

“go again, i swear i’ll pay attention this time.” 

“i was saying that we learned about how we mimic the people we love. our professor didn’t want to elaborate on it too much yet but i looked up some articles and i read somewhere that we start seeing them as extensions of ourselves. and so, in experiments they asked people to do a certain thing, like open their mouth, while they were shown their partner closing their mouth, and the people were always way more inclined to do whatever their partner was doing.” 

junkyu looks at him while he elaborates, a little too fast for junkyu to follow, thinks about the time he went home in the summer and his mother told him how he talked just like yedam. 

“does it mean you start doing things they like too?” he interrupts. jaehyuk looks down at him with a confused tilt to his head. 

“i mean, i guess so, but it’s more than that. it’s like love tricks our brains into thinking they’ve become parts of us. you’ll start taking on their habits, the way they talk, the way they move. sometimes, it’s said that couples that have been together for years and years even begin to look alike, because their faces have grown around the same smiles and frowns.” 

junkyu nods and wonders if he could tell his parents apart by just their laugh wrinkles, if he has traits of that girl he briefly dated in middle school, if the way looking at yedam sometimes feels like looking in a mirror means something more than he wants it to. 

“that’s interesting,” he says then, and turns away from his reflection in the window before it starts to look familiar. 

“it’s like waiting for them to start laughing before you laugh, or cracking your knuckles even though you don’t like the way it sounds just because they do.” jaehyuk brushes his fingers through junkyu’s hair again and looks at him. “it’s like using the same shampoo.” 

junkyu pulls his sleeves over his hands, looks back at him and waits for jaehyuk to continue, to strip junkyu down to his core, digging so far that the very hungry beast inside of him can find its way out before it consumes him. junkyu wishes he could plead for jaehyuk to just understand without junkyu having to say it, for him to give him all the answers he needs without having to ask the questions. instead, he stays silent. 

“you know,” junkyu begins, a laugh that trips over everything still stuck in the back of his throat, a little unsteady. jaehyuk nods for him to go on. around them the dorm is suddenly so very quiet.   
“there was this one time where the vocal coach began praising yedam for teaching me something, i can’t even remember what it was, it’s been so long. it’s funny because he stood there listening and listening to something he didn’t understand, because he didn’t teach me anything. i would go home and listen to recordings of yedam singing all night. at first, it was to get better, but after a while it became comforting. i would hear him sing and it put me right at ease. so i started singing like him too, to feel at home in my own voice. you should've seen him standing there. i would have laughed if it wasn’t so embarrassing.” 

jaehyuk hums quietly, still raking his fingers through junkyu’s hair. it might be the only thing keeping him sane. his heart is thundering in his ribcage, his head feels like it’s coming apart at his temples. jaehyuk brushes a couple of strands from his forehead and pokes his cheek gently. junkyu knows he won’t say anything but he doesn’t need him to. the answer is already right there. his stomach growls but the beast stays quiet. jaehyuk laughs. 

“how are you still hungry after all those choco pies?” 

\- 

something in junkyu changes with the seasons. he sits in his room and watches as the winter creeps in. the air dry, lips cracked. frost on the window panes when he wakes up after three. 

he’s the first one back from their christmas break. one day before all the others. he finds the dorm eerily quiet when haruto isn’t stomping his way down to the fridge for a can of coke every two hours, no yoshi singing in the shower, no pots banging in the kitchen when hyunsuk forces them to eat a meal that isn’t ramen and sprite. no yedam humming to himself in the corner of junkyu’s room when he’s playing minecraft. it’s almost lonely. 

the groupchat is flooded with messages he can’t be bothered to read, a picture of mashiho and doyoung with the cats that he replies to with a heart sticker, a link to a penguin video from jeongwoo, junghwan asking him about minecraft skins. he scrolls up to a selfie of yedam with a baby, a warmth in his fingertips that he chooses not to ignore anymore. 

later, after both hyunsuk and yoshi have barrelled into the kitchen to fill haruto’s quiet space until he comes back from iksan with junghwan, and jihoon has texted him to come up to his floor to watch akira with him and asahi, there’s a quiet knock at his door. 

junkyu pushes it open with his foot and yedam sticks his head through the door with a wide smile. 

“merry christmas,” he grins, teetering in the doorway like he’s unsure whether to come in or not. there’s still snow stuck in his hair. 

junkyu hasn’t seen him for only three days but something inside of him unwinds at the sight of him, like it’s been curled up since yedam waved him goodbye at hapjeong station, where he stood with his bag bulging with gifts on the opposite platform and watched junkyu press his face against the window of the subway carriage.   
and despite the better part of his face being hidden by a mask, junkyu could still tell he was smiling, from the way he leaned towards him even with the trains separating them, his eyes little crescents of the moon. 

“merry christmas,” he replies, and yedam takes it as an invitation to slip into the room, closing the door behind him with a gentle thud. 

“i brought some gangjeong chicken,” he says, and places his hands on junkyu’s shoulders. even through his fleece pyjamas, junkyu can tell how cold they are. he hasn’t been outside all day.   
“mom didn’t feel like having leftovers and dad didn’t feel like cooking so we ordered chicken. she knows it’s your favourite so she told me to take the rest back here.” 

junkyu looks up at yedam, the way his shaggy hair hangs across his forehead, smile upside down. he’s rubbing circles into the back of junkyu’s neck. the knot keeps unfurling. although it’s only been three days, junkyu missed him until his body ached. 

he thinks about yedam’s family at the table in their living room, the songs they sing together, their welcoming smiles. he imagines yedam helping his mother cut carrots in the kitchen and talking about him, that he likes chicken, that he waved at yedam in the subway carriage until he disappeared from sight around the tunnel bend. the idea alone makes him shiver, a gust of winter wind all the way along his spine. 

“sorry,” yedam says, and takes his hands away. “my hands are cold.” 

junkyu wishes he had the courage to ask him to put them back. 

“thanks for the chicken,” he says instead. “did you have a nice time?” 

yedam settles on the bed, too far away from junkyu. he pulls a book from his bag and smiles. 

“yeah, it was good to see my family again. did i ever tell you my cousin had a baby? she’s so adorable. i even got to feed her a bottle.” 

junkyu grins and watches as he starts scribbling away at his homework. every now and then he looks up and laughs at something junkyu says when he starts telling him about his own family’s trip to the south coast. his youngest cousin getting pinched by a crab, their car almost getting submerged in a tidal flat. 

“remember when we almost lost our stuff at the beach last summer? when the tide came in too fast and one of our chairs got swept away?” junkyu asks when he runs out of things to talk about. he thinks about yedam running back into the sea to save junkyu’s empty backpack, the way he felt so bad afterwards he paid for their seafood stew dinner in a small restaurant near the coast, seagulls screeching around their heads. 

yedam laughs and points his pencil at him in accusation. 

“yeah, that was definitely your fault,” he replies. 

“no, it wasn’t,” junkyu puts his hands up in defence but he knows yedam is right. “besides, how was i supposed to know it was low tide?” 

yedam rolls his eyes and pokes junkyu’s arm with a socked foot, grins so widely that his face folds up like a wave crashing onto the shore. “who goes and sits down by the strandline?” he jokes. 

“who agrees with someone to sit down by the strandline?” junkyu reiterates with a jab at yedam’s leg. yedam laughs and looks at him, keeps looking at him like there’s something he needs to say. he turns away eventually, pointing at something on the wall instead. 

“you still have it?” 

junkyu follows his gaze up to a where a slightly discoloured beermat hangs taped to the wall. a ring of coke around one of yedam’s little drawings. asahi taught him to draw over the summer, right before they went to the sea. he boasted to junkyu about it at the restaurant and drew him a consolation card after a seagull had tried to snatch one of junkyu’s mussels from the table and yedam laughed at the look on his face for way too long. yedam had to ask the restaurant owner for a pen because he left his own on the train. the night smelled like salt. junkyu remembers the way sand fell from the pockets of his jacket for weeks after. 

“you gave it to me. why wouldn’t i still have it?” 

yedam shrugs. something sneaks its way in between them and sits there unmoving until junkyu makes his way over to the bed to lie down next to him. yedam shifts, pressing himself against the wall like it’s his own room, like he’s rebuilding something for junkyu even though he already lives there. and he won’t look at him, turns on his back to stare at the white plaster ceiling instead. 

junkyu thinks about the train ride back home, how yedam rested his head on junkyu’s shoulder the entire time. how his hair smelled like salt. how junkyu knew he wasn’t asleep from the way his breathing became unsteady every time junkyu pressed his cheek on top of yedam’s head. how junkyu wanted to kiss him goodbye in the emptying departure hall and instead buried his fingers in sandy pockets. how they never talked about it. 

he turns to look at yedam. 

“i missed you,” he says, and the room fills to the brim with something fragile. yedam swallows and junkyu watches the way his adam’s apple bobs up and down like a boat on the sea. “i think your hair got longer.” 

yedam grins, if only for a split second. junkyu swears he can hear something rumbling so far down below it must be the very core of the earth shaking. everything there has ever been, all those years of human life, being awakened from their eternal slumber just for junkyu to understand how it all comes together. the thundering of his own heart in his ears. some things are the way they are because that’s how they’ve been built from the very beginning of time. 

he reaches out to hold yedam’s arm, leans his head against his shoulder and smiles against his skin. when he licks his lips, they taste like the sea. he thinks about yedam and the rainy mountains, the intertwined trees, the pole star, the sea. love is a mirror, and junkyu has always loved the world around him. 

eventually yedam shifts onto his side, elbow folded beneath his head, winter bleeding into the summer. he looks at junkyu for a long time, a crease between his brows, finally a boy more than a god, a prophecy, a wonder of the universe. junkyu brings a hand up to his face and strokes the skin between his eyes, the way his mother used to when she sang him to sleep.   
yedam relaxes under the touch for just a moment, his eyelids fluttering close like there’s nothing left to fight against. 

and then, “we can’t do this, you know.” 

the words come as a whisper, yedam’s voice folding itself up so it fits into the narrow space between them. they hit like a tidal wave, the foundations crumbling against their weight like a sandcastle. everything goes quiet. junkyu thinks he finally understands what drowning feels like. 

“why?” he manages to ask. his brain surfaces a twelve-year-old yedam, a pinky promise to answer any question junkyu could think of. if only he had known. sometimes there are no _why’s_. some things just are the way they are. 

“i’m sorry,” yedam says instead. 

if junkyu could find it in him to ask the entire question he might’ve gotten something different, something better, something he could pretend is a truth. he looks at what little stars he can see out the window, faint little lights in the bright blue haze. there’s no home to be led towards anymore. 

he touches junkyu’s face very briefly, his hands are still so cold, and for a split second junkyu thinks yedam might have changed his mind. it’s something in the way his eyes glaze over in what junkyu can only recognise as grief. the mourning of something he hasn’t named. 

but then he gets up anyway, teeters in the doorway like he’s unsure whether to leave junkyu with the washed-out ruins of whatever it was they’ve been building. it’s all been swept away. who goes and sits by the strandline? 

“i’m sorry,” he says, and his voice rings in junkyu’s ears for hours and hours. 

“i’m so sorry.” 

and junkyu believes he is. 

\- 

junkyu’s first summer at the company is also the summer of his last growth spurt. there are times at night where his legs hurt so much it feels like his bed swallowing him, holding him so tightly he’s scared he will never find his way out again.   
there are times where it hurts less. he sits under the bright white lights of the dance studio and lets yedam knead his still small hands into the burning skin of his calves underneath the light fabric of his uniform slacks and thanks whatever he can think of.   
yedam tells him a story of something that happened at school; middle school is still new to him. sometimes junkyu laughs at the thought. he’s nearing his own graduation. the future is not yet anything solid. and the shaky stones keep stacking up. 

it’s under the same bright white studio lights junkyu lets the tears finally fall when he’s eliminated from that damn show. it’s the same small hands he’s comforted by, steadily running along his back, his neck, thumbs across the apples of his cheeks. yedam smiles at him, his face less round, strong jaw, big nose, eyes still so bright. junkyu tells him about the time of his growth spurt. 

“it’s funny how you happen to be around every time i need you,” he laughs despite the lump that sits lodged in his throat. his body feels like it’s deflating, but yedam won’t let him crumple. 

“i think i’m always looking for you.” 

and then again, when it has all ended, or when it has all just begun, and neither of them really know where they’re going anymore. junkyu sits and spreads his fingers across the light wood of the floorboards and watches yedam dance and dance, his sweaty hair and burning calves. 

“how do you do it?” he asks. 

yedam stops moving and looks at him through the mirror. there are dark circles under his eyes like the dirt on his knees after soccer practice. 

“what do you mean?” 

“school, friends, this,” junkyu gestures at the dance studio, the future that’s steadily shaping itself in front of them, the thing they’ve been building. “how do you balance it all? how do you know where to go?” 

yedam seems to consider the questions before sinking down onto the floor, dragging himself towards junkyu, pressing their thighs together. he’s always so close. 

“i think i just do it because i have to. there’s no other way. this is the only thing i’ve ever seen myself in,” he says. 

junkyu looks at him and understands. it’s the answers that keep him going even when all the questions blur together. 

“you know how some sharks die when they stop swimming? i’m scared that’s gonna happen to me too.” 

it’s quiet for a second. yedam sits still and keeps building and building, then he gets up and takes his position again to start where he left off. and junkyu follows his every movement like there’s something to be found in the way he exists. 

in hindsight, junkyu thinks he’s been in love for so long he doesn’t really know when it ever started at all. 

\- 

"junkyu, do you believe in god?" yedam asks, looking up at him with his right eye squinted against the glaring sunlight. when the leaves rustle overhead, the sun moves across his face in bright white spots. his hair has grown past his ears, cheeks burnt, the summer embedded underneath his skin. 

junkyu looks at him, the way the sunlight turns him into gold, and almost says yes. he supposes it counts as prayer, to whisper yedam's name into the dark again and again when there is no one around to hear it.   
instead, he shrugs and reaches for the dingy storefront freezer to pick out an array of ice creams for the others; red bean, chocolate and banana, an iced latte for hyunsuk. 

"i don't know," he replies, "maybe." 

yedam laughs at that, brings a hand up to face, a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. he tears the wrapper off the last mint chocolate ice cream bar. 

"what do you mean, maybe? isn't it just yes or no?" 

junkyu smiles and turns away from him to pay the old lady that sits at the register, grins bashfully when she calls him a handsome young man. he puts the change in the jar on the counter and doesn't check which charity it’s for. behind him, yedam waits. 

“handsome young man,” he repeats teasingly when junkyu opens the door. the light outside is so bright it hurts his head.   
he playfully pushes yedam off the curb and into the street, catching his hand at the last moment to pull him back in.   
“saved your life,” he laughs and ignores the heat that sits like sunlight in his fingertips where they are curled around yedam’s wrist. 

"you know, i think we just can't say for sure. there's so many things we will never find the answers to. maybe god is real and just like us, maybe god isn't real and we are all just one big coincidence," junkyu explains as they walk away from the store, the plastic bag in his hand swaying between them, back down to the river that is so low in its bank their toes can't reach the water. it's a dry summer, the grass pale yellow beneath their feet. 

"maybe we have it all wrong. maybe we're all god, and everything is god. maybe god is just what we find in the things we can't quite understand." 

yedam looks at him in that way he does sometimes, when he catches junkyu's gaze across the room like he's searching for something, like he's found it already. 

"i guess i never thought of it like that," he replies. they sit down in the shadow of a sycamore, away from the midday sun’s blistering heat. "of course i've questioned god, but i think it always comes back to reassurance. it puts me at ease to think god exists because i won't have to get so caught up in trying to find a reason for everything, you know. maybe some things just are the way they are." 

junkyu digs his fingers into the dry earth and thinks about his father. there's no reason to look for the truth if there’s nowhere to find it. he looks at the ants on yedam's knee, his shin. junkyu brushes them off and doesn't say anything. he takes a bite of his ice cream and watches the others, playing soccer, lounging around, waiting for something they've only ever dreamed of. 

"i think that maybe believing that things are what they are brings me more grief than it does comfort. there's just so many things i don't understand. i don't think god would give me all these questions and then never answer them." 

he turns back to yedam, the home he's made within him, the unsteady foundations of their dreams built from the same shaky stones. yedam bites his ice cream and looks at him like there’s something he wants to say. down the path jihoon yelps at something jeongwoo and jaehyuk look both amused and guilty about, in that order. haruto languidly makes his way over to lay down in the grass between them. 

"besides," junkyu grins, gesturing at the ice cream bar dripping down the sides of yedam's fingers. "no god would allow something as disgusting as mint chocolate anyway." 

around them the cicadas buzz loudly in the ginkgo trees. yedam laughs with the sun in his eyes. a god in his own right. 

hours later, when junkyu buries his head in his pillow, which smells too much of washing powder and not enough of sleep, he can still hear it ringing in his ears. 

\- 

they're lying on junkyu's bed together. the way they always do. yedam still fits. the way he always does. 

there is something unspoken between them. the kind of feeling that makes junkyu turn to face the wall at night, little crescent moons in the wallpaper where he presses his fingernails into it when there’s nothing else to do. next to him yedam sighs like a house settling in its frame. junkyu can feel the foundations shivering underneath. 

“i’m sorry, you know, about the other day.” 

the words sound like they’ve been drowned out, like they are underwater, like junkyu can only vaguely make out where yedam ends and the water begins. he nods slowly. 

“it’s okay.” 

the cartoon yedam and junkyu on the beermat are grinning at them from where they've been taped onto the wall. it’s almost taunting. junkyu has to resist the urge to tear it off. 

“you promised you would answer all my questions,” he continues, before he can think about it. he knows it sounds accusing from the way yedam winces. 

it’s so very quiet. junkyu can hear his own blood rushing in his ears. it almost sounds like the sea. across from him yedam closes his eyes. junkyu keeps looking at him and searches for an answer. 

and then yedam gives it to him. 

“you’ve never asked, you know.” 

junkyu blinks once, twice. the light is so faint that yedam looks like he’s being swallowed by the night and yet his eyes are so bright. 

“what do you mean?” 

yedam sighs. 

“you do this thing where you sit with all these things in your head, and all these questions that you are too afraid to ask until you come up with answers yourself and forget that they’re not real.” 

junkyu is taken aback but yedam is smiling. and junkyu would ignore the way his stomach churns in anger and something he can’t name if he wasn’t so confused. 

“well, i don’t think i need to ask anything anymore. i think you were clear enough last time.” 

“i’m sorry,” yedam says again. “i panicked.” 

he reaches out to touch junkyu’s cheek very briefly. and it’s different than anything else he’s ever done. it’s like he’s leaving something there. a message. the proof of something he can’t say out loud, like the handprints left on cave walls from thousands and thousands of years ago. the answer to a question no one has yet asked. 

yedam smiles at him, just like he did under the fluorescent lights of the studio all those years ago, his small hands wrapped around junkyu’s wrists like he’s never going to let go. and in him junkyu sees the history of all of humanity, and how it boils down to one thing. 

“it’s love isn’t it,” junkyu breathes out softly, and he doesn't know if it’s the answer, if there's an answer at all, but that doesn't mean he won't say it. 

yedam is always so close. junkyu only has such a small gap to bridge to kiss him. 

a splitting grin. the sun eating the sky. yedam is the first to lean in. and if junkyu didn’t feel like he was drowning, he’d be on fire. 

“yes,” yedam says later, a whisper in the dark through red-bitten lips. he smiles, snaking a steady hand along junkyu’s hip to gently rub the small of his back, entangles their legs like tree roots. the foundations have solidified. the beast has a home. yedam kisses him again and again. it’s almost morning. 

“it’s been love all along.” 

**Author's Note:**

> teuha 
> 
> this is a fic i had sitting in my google docx for a while and i decided to post it even tho it isnt actually finfished i just couldnt be bothered anymore and i had to at least write an ending so ik its corny. even tho i know its not cohesive nor very clear i hope u still liked it. if you did please leave a comment bc i love getting those!! it can be something dumb too pls i am deprived of praise..;
> 
> and about the "is god real" thing idk what their religions are or how they view that this is just fiction
> 
> (title was taken from mitski strawberry blond bc i am insane <3)
> 
> thanks for readign ily <3


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